English society
[4] After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, society seemed fixed and unchanging for several centuries, but gradual and significant changes were still taking place, the exact nature of which would not be appreciated until much later.
At the same time the population of England more than doubled between Domesday and the end of the 13th century, and this growth was not checked by the almost continual foreign warfare, crusades and occasional civil anarchy.
This social mobility was combined with the fact that peasants could charge much more for their services, and this began a switch from indentured labourer to wage earner, which signalled the decline of the feudal system.
The first of several sumptuary laws were also made, dictating exactly how people at every level of society should dress and what they could own, in an effort to enforce social distinctions.
[18] Geofrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales give an illuminating picture of many of the different people who made up medieval society, although these portraits are limited mainly to the middle classes.
The Wife of Bath is one particularly vibrant character within the Tales, and a few years later a real-world equivalent, Margery Kempe, showed in her autobiography that women had an important part in medieval society.
[20] Before they were broken up and sold by Henry VIII, monasteries had been one of the important parts of social welfare, giving alms and looking after the destitute, and their disappearance meant that the state would have to adopt this role, which culminated in the Poor Law of 1601.
[24] At a somewhat higher social level, families ate an enormous variety of meats, especially beef, mutton, veal, lamb, and pork, as well as chickens and ducks.
Many rural folk and some townspeople tended a small garden which produced vegetables such as asparagus, cucumbers, spinach, lettuce, beans, cabbage, carrots, leeks, and peas, as well as medicinal and flavoring herbs.
[33] Newspapers were new and soon became important tools of social discourse, and the diarists of the time such as Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn are some of the best sources we have of everyday life in Restoration England.
They have used local records, as well as literary sources, to explore how crime was defined and detected, the changes in the court system, the central importance of elite attitudes toward the poor and dangerous classes, professional criminals, and the amateur and community element in law enforcement before the establishment of police forces in the 19th century.
The British Agricultural Revolution included innovations in technology such as Jethro Tull's seed drill which allowed greater yields, while the process of enclosure, which had been altering rural society since the Middle Ages, became unstoppable.
Wahrman (1992) argues that the new urban elites included two types: the gentlemanly capitalist, who participated in the national society, and the independent bourgeois, who was oriented toward the local community.
In response to the religious and moral apathy of the common people, Methodist preachers set up societies divided into classes—intimate meetings where individuals were encouraged to confess their sins to one another and to build each other up.
Large numbers travelling to quiet fishing villages such as Worthing, Brighton, Morecambe and Scarborough began turning them into major tourist centres, and people like Thomas Cook saw arranging for domestic and foreign tourism as a viable business model.
In addition to stressing the traditional Wesleyan combination of "Bible, cross, conversion, and activism", the revivalist movement sought a universal appeal, designed to reach rich and poor, urban and rural, and men and women.
According to scholar Mark S. Sweetnam, dispensationalism can be defined in terms of its Evangelicalism, its insistence on the literal interpretation of Scripture, its recognition of stages in God's dealings with humanity, its expectation of the imminent return of Christ to rapture His saints, and its focus on both apocalypticism and premillennialism.
Examples include an effigy of Cardinal Wiseman, the new head of the restored hierarchy, being paraded through the streets and burned on Bethnal Green, and graffiti proclaiming 'No popery!'
[85] At the end of the nineteenth century one contemporary wrote that "the prevailing opinion of the religious people I knew and loved was that Roman Catholic worship is idolatry, and that it was better to be an Atheist than a Papist".
More important, he was strongly opposed to the authoritarianism of its pope and bishops, its profound public opposition to liberalism, and its refusal to distinguish between secular allegiance on the one hand and spiritual obedience on the other.
Samuel Hynes described the Edwardian era as a "leisurely time when women wore picture hats and did not vote, when the rich were not ashamed to live conspicuously, and the sun never set on the British flag.
More generally, argues Barbara Burman, "home dressmaking was sustained as an important aid for women negotiating wider social shifts and tensions in their lives.
[119] The Edwardian Era saw a decrease in the trend for voluminous, heavy skirts:[120] The turn of the century saw the rise of popular journalism aimed at the lower middle class and tending to deemphasise highly detailed political and international news, which remain the focus of a handful of low-circulation prestige newspapers which reached a small elite.
The almost three million casualties were known as the "lost generation", and such numbers inevitably left society scarred; but even so, some people felt their sacrifice was little regarded in Britain, with poems like Siegfried Sassoon's Blighters criticising the ill-informed jingoism of the home front.
The shortage of servants was felt in the kitchen, but now instead of an experience cook spending hours on difficult custards and puddings the ordinary housewife working alone could purchase instant foods in jars, or powders that could be quickly mixed.
The focus on agriculture to feed the nation gave some people their first introduction to the countryside, and women played an important part in the war effort as the Land Girls.
[132] A half a million women served in the armed forces, led by Princess Elizabeth, the future queen, who donned the ATS soldier's uniform as a lorry driver.
Dire predictions were made about the effect of these new arrivals on British society (most famously Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech), and tension led to a few race riots.
[147] Religious observance declined notably in Britain during the second half of the 20th century, even with the growth of non-Christian religions due to immigration and travel (see Islam in the UK).
[150] Growing disparity in the relative affluence of those who have benefitted and those 'left behind' from the deindustrialisation and globalisation of the economy was attributed as one of the primary factors behind the surprise victory of the 'leave' campaign in the 2016 European Union membership referendum, and began wider discourse on the emergence of 'two countries' within England that represented greatly differing social attitudes and outlooks.
